Amerika

Most people desire insanity. When civilization does not exist, they aspire to insanity because they fear nature. When civilization occurs, they signal against it in order to show how independent they are, and resent it as much as they feared nature. Then the contrarians take over and the game changes somewhat.

At that point, most people desire insanity that says everything is going fine when in fact it is in decline. They cling to this insanity because if it can be portrayed as good and true, then we can all go on thinking that our system is doing great. If not, we must admit that it is failing.

This is how democracy creates Pod People. They exist to believe that the insanity — the notion that humans control this world, and are not subject to its internal patterns — is fine so that they can believe their lives are fine, merely because they are terrified that a better option might exist.

Humans need to feel that they are on the right path. When someone else sets a path before them, they may go down it in order to compete with the others, but they always feel doubt, because anything handed to you in life is something you choose for reasons of method, not goal; you have entrusted the goal — the why of life — to others.

This doubt rules them from the point where any civilization is established. Humans invent vast religions, political systems, and economic incentives to banish the doubt, but it is always there. We wonder what else is out there, and if it is better, because if it is, we are wasting our singular lives on an illusion.

People need to compete with others for what ultimately drives society, namely the paycheck, itself a proxy for food, shelter, safety, and the ability to procreate. This creates system people, or those who vie for a place in the system because they view it as the easiest alternative.

When those people then begin rationalizing the failures of the system, and how it influences them psychologically in ways that they dislike and cannot control, they become Pod People. They believe in democracy because if they do not, they have to admit that the path is leading them astray.

These people depend on the system for a sense of wellbeing. This originates in the idea that they have chosen well and there is nothing better. Democracy creates the need to believe in democracy, and correspondingly to “sell oneself” not as a commercial product but as a social product.

When everyone is equal and the dogma of equality rules, only those who are in the approved inner circle will get anywhere. For this reason most people adopt pro-democracy opinions and look for new ways (transsexualism, diversity, drugs, promiscuity) to demonstrate their allegiance to egalitarianism.

As we see time and time again, formalization leads to inversion because the method becomes the goal and the original goal is forgotten. We do things without knowing why. This is the problem of the “first mover”: whoever acts first defines the pattern, and everything is reacting to that, like contrarians and their Pod People rhetoric.

The Pod People believe outrageous lies every day because those lies make Pod People feel secure in their choice of following the path. They spread those lies in order to fool others so that all will be in agreement that the path is not just good but the only possible option.

If you wonder why conservatives and other realists are demonized, it is because we upset Pod People hegemony. They no longer can look at the path as the only way, and have to confront the fact that other alternatives exist. This frightens them in their souls, and they will choose any lie no matter how outrageous to avoid that feeling of instability.

Tags: crowdism, egalitarianism, pod people, rationalization